ReView Fay Jones School of Architecture + Design Winter 2019/2020 DEAN’S VIEW Greetings to all of you, wherever you may be, as CONTENTS our alumni and friends community is located near and far, achieving significant impact in Arkansas, across the United States and, in fact, across the globe. School News 2 As I write, the spring 2020 semester is well underway, and we are not only filled with the excitement and enthusiasm of this new semester, Furniture Exhibition 6 beginning a new decade, but also with the recent news announced by the American Institute of Architects of professor Marlon Blackwell’s recognition as the 2020 Russell Cothren Q & A: John Folan 8 AIA Gold Medalist. As most of you will surely know, While we continue to emphasize and develop Marlon joins our namesake, Fay Jones, as the second standards of excellence in our central undergraduate 10 school faculty member to be so recognized. And professional degree programs of architecture, interior 10 CLT Panels Studied in New Hall while it is a signal accomplishment for Marlon, and design and landscape architecture, we are now CLT Panels Studied in New Hall his practice and his teaching, the recognition brings working with equal intensity on a range of “super- Adohi Hall will serve as a testbed for to us a measure of reflected spotlight and a further design” initiatives, engaging all disciplines to larger campus researchers to study this Housing Redefined 16 indication of the quality of architecture and design agendas and purposes – in particular, in timber and unique building material. education that the school provides. wood design, in resiliency design, in community A New Way of 22 Beyond the immediate moment, the school design, in preservation design, in housing design, and continues to grow and prosper – both quantitatively in wellness design. Manufacturing and qualitatively. We have experienced an These initiatives have been built upon the approximately 25 percent growth in school strengths of the school, the strengths of our alumni, Bolivia: Designing for 26 enrollment over the last five years, and we anticipate as well as on our capacity for outreach across the state Common Ground continued steady enrollment for the next five years. and on new partnerships and new resources enabling In particular, while the Department of Architecture the expansion of our teaching, research and service. 40 certainly maintains its historically strong numbers, a The contents of this issue of ReView demonstrate Innovative Micro Shelter Design Through Prototype 32 significant growth has occurred in the Department of these multiple qualities and the multiple initiatives, The U of A Community Design Center teamed with others to create a Interior Design (33 percent alone in the last two years) and summarize the many accomplishments of our transitional housing community for Mass Appeal 38 and in the Department of Landscape Architecture (13 students, faculty and alumni. We look forward in chronically homeless people. percent in the last two years). this semester to the initial phases of the design and These strong enrollment numbers are matched construction of a new facility for the school, the Innovative Micro Shelter 40 by equally strong career placement numbers, as Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials our students have graduated at or near 100 percent Innovation, as well as a rich program of public ReView Editorial Staff placement into professional offices, internships lectures, exhibitions and conferences. And I invite you Alumni Spotlight: Calli Verkamp 48 and graduate programs. Not only are our students all to attend and participate in the ways you can, in Editor benefitting from a healthy economy, but they are person or online. Michelle Parks clearly benefitting from a superb education, a strong You have my continued thanks for your support Director of Communications Alumni Design Awards 54 reputation and a supportive community of alumni and my best wishes for this new year. Designer and friends nationwide. Cassidy Flanagin Design Camp Grows 62 Now in my sixth year as dean, I am proud to assert not only this record of success with enrollment and Writers career placement, but as importantly, to assert the Bettina Lehovec Shawnya Meyers Faculty News 64 school’s growing impact upon the quality of life and the quality of the constructed environment for the Peter MacKeith, dean and professor Editor’s note: This issue of ReView introduces a new design that good of the state, the region and the nation. Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design gives more attention to creative work in the school while reinforcing School Events 66 As Chancellor Joseph Steinmetz often emphasizes the priorities of the University of Arkansas. We hope you enjoy it! to the University of Arkansas community, the mission A final postscript: As this issue of Review went to press, news arrived of the passing of Ernie Jacks (B.Arch. ’50), beloved alumnus, faculty member Development News 72 of this land-grant institution is fundamentally to and associate dean of the school. Our condolences to the Jacks family serve the citizens of the state and, thereby, the larger and many friends. The next issue of Review will include a more complete On the cover, a detail of a pavilion designed and built in the spring 2019 interests of the nation. remembrance of Ernie. Mass Appeal studio (see pages 38-39). Image courtesy of Emily Baker. ReView: Winter 2019/2020 ReView: Winter 2019/2020 1 ARENDT WINS DONGHIA For the fourth time in five years, an interior . design student in the Fay Jones School has been recognized with a $30,000 Senior Student Scholarship Award from the Angelo Donghia Foundation, a non- profit organization that promotes design education. This scholarship is the largest, most prestigious award within interior design Somewhere Studio education. Anna Arendt, from Bryant, Arkansas, was selected for the scholarship based on the design project she submitted to the foundation – a ski resort in Stowe, Vermont. She was among 15 students selected from a pool of 69 student projects from accredited universities in this year’s competition. Previous Fay Jones School recipients were Kelly Walsh in 2015 and Jessica Baker and Christine Wass in 2016. INTERACTING WITH FAY JONES’ WORK Professors Greg Herman and David Fredrick lead an interdisciplinary project, “A House of the Ozarks,” which intends to bring the work of Fay Jones to a wide public audience. As part of the project, SALVAGE SWINGS an interactive kiosk that explores Jones’ Jessica Colangelo and Charles Sharpless won the 2019 Committee of the American Institute of Architects New York residential design work was publicly City of Dreams Pavilion competition with their design for Chapter, and the Structural Engineers Association of New launched in April 2019 on the Fayetteville a pavilion of swing structures made from discarded cross- York. The international competition was open to anyone – square. It then moved to Vol Walker Hall laminated timber panels. They developed the design for the not just architects or designers – and entrants were asked and then was relocated to the Fayetteville project working through their professional firm, Somewhere to build a pavilion that showcases sustainable building Public Library lobby for several months in Studio. Colangelo, assistant professor of architecture, and practices. the summer and fall. Sharpless, lecturer, joined the Fay Jones School faculty in fall 2018. As part of the sustainability consideration, Colangelo said The kiosk experience offers a virtual the Salvage Swings segments were designed so they can interaction with the Fay and Gus Jones Their design, Salvage Swings, is made up of 12 identical be taken apart and reassembled elsewhere – whether House in Fayetteville, designed by Jones swing structures put together to form a pavilion. Each piece that means all together as the 12-structure pavilion or for his family and built in 1956, as well was built from salvaged cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels individually. as a speculative house designed for the left over from constructing the new campus residence hall, property next door. By engaging with This project is supported by an $86,000 award from the Adohi Hall (see page 10). The reusability of the designers’ proposal stood out to the kiosk software, people can visit a historic home not Chancellor’s Innovation and Collaboration Fund for 2017- the City of Dreams competition’s four-person jury, whose generally open to the public, as well as a home that was 2018, with additional support provided by the Fay Jones Every swing structure has a circle cut out of the side for members said they appreciated “the pavilion’s clear afterlife never built. School. a window, and that circle is used as the seat of the swing. as disassembled, reusable modules, and enjoy the details of Their pavilion design was built and displayed in summer the cut-out swing set.” The interdisciplinary team behind the project are U of A Herman and Fredrick spoke about Jones’ work and their 2019 on Roosevelt Island in New York City. It then spent faculty, staff and students from the Fay Jones School and collaborative project at a November presentation at the several months during the fall 2019 semester on the lawn of The pair hired two students as research assistants – Shiloh the Tesseract Center for Immersive Environments and Game library. Eventually, they plan for the kiosk to travel to high- Vol Walker Hall. In March 2020, the Salvage Swings pavilion Bemis, then a second year architecture student, and Bryan Design, which is part of the J. William Fulbright College of traffic locations around Northwest Arkansas. was relocated to the Scott Family Amazeum in Bentonville. Murren, then a fourth year architecture student – who Arts and Sciences. Herman is an associate professor in the . helped mill the panels, along with members of the Fay Jones Department of Architecture, and Fredrick is an associate The City of Dreams Pavilion competition was hosted by the School’s fabrication lab.